India Worst In The World For The Highest Number Of People Without Basic Sanitation

India, the world’s second-largest country by population, comes out top for the highest number of people without basic sanitation (732 million), according to a new report.

Out Of Order: The State of the World’s Toilets 2017 report by WaterAid says that 355 million women and girls are still waiting for a toilet in India and if they were all to stand in a queue, it would stretch around the Earth more than four times.

China comes second to India despite being the most populous country in the world.

According to government data, the Swachh Bharat Mission built 52 million household toilets between October 2014 and November 2017 and the WaterAid report says that it ranks in the top ten countries for reducing open defecation and improving access to basic sanitation. However, the country still fares poorly in basic sanitation facilities.

Last year, India was the country with the lowest number of urban-dwellers without safe, private toilets.

Globally, the top 10 countries without access to toilets are:

Open Defecation: The lack of toilets in India

The report talks about the country’s progress in reducing open defecation – the proportion of Indians defecating in the open has decreased by 40%, meaning more than 100 million people no longer face this indignity. WaterAid attributes this progress to the Swacch Bharat Mission.

However, a 2016 survey of 7,500 households across India had found that 29% of Swacch Bharat toilets exist only in paper and 36% have been built but are unusable. This year in October, claims that 155 villages in Madhya Pradesh have become open defecation free (ODF) were annulled after verification.

The Indian government has a target of eliminating open defecation by the end of 2019 and 1,171,000 people got decent toilets in the last year with the combined efforts of WaterAid and the government, per the report.

The country ranks sixth among the top ten nations working to reduce open defecation and improving access to basic sanitation.

However, the report adds, “the work is far from done, and the need stretches beyond households to schools and hospitals.”

According to the World Health Organization, two in five health centres lack basic sanitation, putting patients and health workers at risk of infection. 40% of people practise open defecation in India, while 732 million people lack decent toilets, per WaterAid.

60,700 children under five die each year from related diarrhoeal diseases in India

Diarrhoea remains the second leading cause of death in Indian children under five years of age.

Every year, 2,89,000 children under-five die globally due to diarrhoea caused by dirty water and poor toilets and hygiene.

The 2015-16 infant mortality rate (IMR) of India is 41, while the under-five mortality rate is 50. The condition is the worst in Uttar Pradesh where the IMR is 64 deaths per 1,000 live births.

The states with the worst improvement in sanitation are Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. Top five states with access to improved sanitation are Kerala, Sikkim, Mizoram, Punjab and Haryana.

The National Family Health Survey 4 (NFHS 4) also throws light on the poor state of Indian children. Open defecation is a leading contributor of diarrhoea – hookworms, which can be spread by open defecation, cause diarrhoea, anaemia and weight loss in women, and are linked to low birth weight and slow child growth.

The impact of poor sanitation on women and girls

The report by WaterAid points out that female biological needs make a lack of toilets particularly harmful for women and girls, from birth, through childhood, into puberty, throughout adult life, and into old age.

Poor sanitation and hygiene also increase the risk of infection during and after childbirth, with sepsis accounting for 11% of maternal deaths worldwide.

Girls who don’t have decent toilets at school or near home have to defecate in the open or use unsafe, unhygienic toilets, often shared with boys. Aside from the health risks, this is uncomfortable, embarrassing and puts them at risk of verbal and even physical abuse, the report continues.

When the Swacch Bharat campaign was started by the Modi-led government on 2 October 2014, it encouraged people to photograph those dirtying their surroundings and upload the pictures on Facebook, Twitter and even government websites. The government’s motive was to cause embarrassment and humiliation to offenders, forcing them to change their habit.

When the progress has been sluggish, the solution to preventing open defecation is not public humiliation but actually building usable toilets.

To read the full Out Of Order: The State of the World’s Toilets 2017 report by WaterAid click here.

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Be A True Ally To The Women In Your Life #ShareTheLoad

Women empowerment is one of the most important words of the present times. It is not a mere phrase but it rather represents a movement, which has been pending for the longest time. However, many have a misconception that educating women, “letting” them work, etc. is all that women empowerment is all about. However, the concept of women empowerment is more of an umbrella term. It intends to involve society as a whole, including men.

We always encourage and applaud a woman who successfully balances both work life and her household. But won’t it be easy for that woman if the load of the work is shared? We see that in our society a woman’s primary role is seen as that of a homemaker. At the same time, her personal likes, aspirations, and dreams are forced to be put on the backburner because of the undue expectation that she has to single handedly manage the household while balancing her career. To give credit where it is due, the times are changing. Men and women of the house are increasingly sharing the workload. However, one can also not turn a blind to the fact that a lot more still needs to be done.

Driving home the same concept, popular brand Ariel has come up with brilliant communication.

The video shows a mother speaking to her married daughter over the phone, all whilst cleaning the mess her son has created. She is absolutely heartbroken when her daughter says that she plans to quit her job since juggling both a demanding job and her household has become too overwhelming. It is during this time that she realises that while she and her husband as parents left no stone unturned to give an all-round upbringing to their daughter, they somewhere forgot to teach their son some basic life skills like cooking and doing laundry so that they grow out to be equally responsible in doing household chores. This is not a story of just one family, but of families across the country. These are some things which everyone must know, not for any other reason, but simply because these are basic tasks which are absolutely essential to survive. And, they make you capable to be equal partners tomorrow!

As Ariel raises an important question-is household work only a woman’s job? We need to ask ourselves the same question. A recent study revealed that the unpaid work done by women around the world amounted to 43 times the annual turnover of Apple Inc. It is high time we share the load and change the narrative that household work is the “duty” of a woman. As the video shows, contributing to the household work is not only a daughter’s work, but the son must contribute his bit too. It is also important for the parents to instil a sense of responsibility in their children, irrespective of their gender so that at any juncture of their lives, they are not completely dependent on another person for basic tasks like these. Ariel has been consistently driving this message and addressing the inequality within households since 2015. The Logical Indian applauds Ariel for coming up with such a brilliant video for depicting such an important concept.